That game jam based on Oblivion's terrible persuasion wheel actually produced some good, weird ideas

A screenshot of game jam submission Blade & Wheel. A character wielding a sword awaits input from the user interface, a "wheel" on which the words "cower, "attack," "attack," or "struggle" are arranged.

(Image credit: Graeme Borland)

A couple of months ago PC Gamer's Joshua Wolens bemoaned the state of this world with regards to how there is not in fact an elaborate remaster or remake of Oblivion available to him. He was consoled, however, by the fact that some indies were making an entire slew of jam games based on Oblivion's uh, polarizing, persuasion wheel. (It's bad, actually. You can watch a little video of it.)

Well, the game jam's runtime is over and it… actually produced some really good, weird ideas for games. These were all made in a week of total chaos by indie developers—which is to say they're proof of concept, not finished games. But they're free, cute, and fun.

There's a lot more that's cool too. There's one about fighting demons using your wheel-driven office productivity software. There's one about the wheel being a magic circle. There's one pretty straightforward one about befriending weirdo cryptids via wheel. There's one about cooking chili using the wheel. There's one about engine flywheels and I'll bet you can figure out where the wheel is in there.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.

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